I visited Saddle River Inn on my journey to the 25 most essential restaurants in North Jersey, as decided by you, the readers. I found food that satisfies both body and soul.
Saddle River Inn: 25 Most Essential Restaurants in NJ
Reporter Matt Cortina visited the Saddle River Inn on his most recent journey through 25 of the most essential north jersey restaurants.
Saddle River Inn is one of North Jersey’s most heralded restaurants.Che Jamie Knott pays homage to the eatery’s French roots while adding in Japanese and American influences.Locally sourced, seasonal ingredients shine in dishes that hit your palate in layers.
Halfway through the first course at Saddle River Inn on a recent weekday night, I’m thinking about travel.
Practically, I’m winding down from the stress of trying to make a dinner reservation at one of the state’s hardest restaurants to get one while sitting in traffic on 287 long enough to not only decide what I’ll order for dinner, but to hear my wife read off the menus of about half of the 25 most essential restaurants in North Jersey I’m visiting in 2025.
Historically, I’m thinking about the journey the rustic building in which Saddle River Inn resides has taken. Where once logs were cut into planks and baskets were woven by the calloused hands of early American laborers, I now sip a warm carrot and ginger soup from a shot glass, pinky extended, thinking about whether amuse-bouche indeed amuses my bouche.
And poetically, I’m thinking about how each dish that comes out of chef Jamie Knott’s kitchen and onto our white-clothed tables, under the centuries-old wooden rafters, travels on the palate.
In one bite of tuna carpaccio, a bullet train of candied lemon speeds toward a cliff. I’m bracing for it to go off the rails in an explosion of sourness, except it never does. An earthy, bitter radish boards, then an herbaceous baby basil, then fatty avocado, then the dry heat of sliced, raw jalapeno, then the cool, meaty tuna and we slow down and arrive where I assume Knott want us to: a little bewildered but satisfied.
It’s exceptional — to taste each individual element of the dish in one bite and to feel, viscerally, why each was included. It’s high-end culinary craftsmanship and to describe it requires words not necessarily of sensation, but of time, place and movement.
In short, to eat the food at Saddle River Inn — much the like the bottlenecked journey to get here and the transformation this old mill has undergone in the last 165 years — is to travel in place, and I’m glad I have a ticket to ride.
Saddle River Inn: An essential restaurant in North Jersey
Hans and Imelda Egg opened the Saddle River Inn in 1981 in this old sawmill and factory on the William Packard Estate (now known as Barnstable Court) in Saddle River. It was a fine-dining French restaurant and when Knott and Peter Liloia bought it in 2013, they sought to keep the tradition alive.
Now I never went to the old Saddle River Inn so I can’t compare, but I also can’t imagine a better steward of high culinary standards than Knott. His restaurants — the French bistro Madame, the tiki bar and restaurant Cellar 335 in Jersey City, and the more casual Saddle River Café — are all held in high regard.
Knott is a graduate of the New York Restaurant School, cut his chops as executive chef at Artisanal and the BLT restaurants and helped open (the now departed) Fascino in Montclair with Ryan DePersio.
He’s also just an affable dude who clearly cares about his craft and the restaurant industry in New Jersey. He was the chef honoree at the nonprofit Table to Table’s annual gala in 2024 not only for his culinary chops but for his work lifting other restaurateurs and supporting the organization’s efforts to fight food insecurity through food rescue.
Saddle River Inn is not only his crown jewel but one of New Jersey’s: It was one of OpenTable’s top 100 restaurants in the country in 2023 and 2024 (joining Stella Restaurant in Ventnor City as the only two in New Jersey last year).
The cuisine here — yes, French, but with plenty of nods to Japanese and western American cuisine — starts with a focus on sourcing excellent ingredients. They only use Prime dry-aged beef, line-caught and sustainable seafood and local organic produce.
Your eyes may glaze over because you’ve heard those buzzwords so many times, but Knott and his team put on a pedestal these ingredients. Beef cuts are perfectly (and I mean perfectly) cooked with flavorful, textured crusts and velvety insides. But the produce shines too. Accents that might be afterthoughts, like nuggets of sweet, diced baby corn in a noodle dish with a dozen other elements, become stars because of their freshness and preparation.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the meal (indeed, I was expecting culinary greatness per your recommendations), was that while the prices are high, the tables are clothed in white linen, the patrons are clothed in suit jackets and Bvlgari jewlery, and the servers are well-versed and attentive, it’s actually a pretty chill vibe there. You’re at Saddle River Inn to enjoy your company and your food, which is nice because you’ll want to discuss with your guests how good each bite is after you take it.
The meal at Saddle River Inn
Saddle River Inn is BYOB, which helps mitigate the price tag — appetizers range from about $25-$45, entrees from $35-$75 and steaks at market price. We brought an Oregon pinot noir thinking it’d be versatile enough for the varied plates we’d eat. It sufficed, but I can’t help but wonder what the experience would be like with curated wine pairings.
Dinner starts with the aforementioned and complimentary amuse-bouche. Ours was the warm carrot-ginger soup, though yours may be different depending on the season. It’s thick and smooth, with subtle ginger; just enough to spice the dish and complement the carrot’s sweetness.
There’s also bread service. You can choose all or any of three daily breads. The hearth-flavored, thick crusts on each were irresistible, but I preferred the flavor of the potato onion bread — a little sweet and a little funky — most. I was skeptical of the fruited butter (raspberry and sage), but I was a fool.
Along with the tuna carpaccio appetizer, we selected the Szechuan noodles and Wagyu beef tataki. The description on the menu implored us to “Trust us” on the latter, and I’m typically inclined to believe moxie committed to print. Again, Saddle River Inn walked the walk.
A perfectly seared skirt steak (yeah, skirt steak) had a charred, almost caramelized crust and fell apart in the mouth. It’s served on a crisped rice patty that (forgive me, epicureans) had the texture of a tater tot and provided much appreciated crunch. Caviar on top brought salinity, brine and fat. Even the addition of something so simple as black and white sesame seeds added dryness to the dish — it was both the first and last note on each bite, a thoughtful, palate-cleansing overture and coda.
Already primed to expect greatness, I think I physically fist-pumped when our waiter set down our bowls of Szechuan noodles. It’s my jam (and, Knott told me afterwards, his too): spicy beef, ginger, scallions, bean sprouts and peanut sauce. As with the other dishes, the complexity illuminates different parts of your tongue at different times like fireflies on a warm dusk: here’s creamy, salty peanut, then savory beef, then a throat-chop of spice on the end and, oh what are these feral baby snap peas and sweet baby corn doing stealing the show?
I’m inclined to believe Knott and Co. are mindful, too, of how they balance their menu in toto. Because while the appetizers offered smaller, exploratory, thought-provoking bites, the entrees felt substantial and designed to please the soul and stomach more than the mind.
The Maribar was a holdover from the previous iteration of Saddle River Inn (Knott has said it was something like 80% of sales previously), but this version aligns with modern culinary trends. A thick medallion of filet mignon is smothered in bearnaise and chestnut butter and set atop a roast shallot mash. I’m not a big steak guy, but I cursed when I ate the first bite it was so good: again, a perfect sear, an almost impossibly tender steak, creamy sauce brightened just so by fresh herb, a bright, oniony mash and a wave of umami from the chestnut butter.
Our other entrée, Barnegat scallops with peppery arugula, pepitas, heat-tinged cherry tomatoes and a bright dressing were a perfect foil to the steak. The scallops were meaty and seared to perfection, their salinity amplified by the dressing. While the accents were thoughtful, they were indeed accents; the scallops were the main attraction here, and the dish overall effected a light, summery evening on the water.
Dessert was a caramel bread pudding and a pretty plate of chocolate mousse in a graham wafer boat with a dollop of vanilla ice cream and edible violets. I loved the balance of crunch on the edges of the bread pudding with the moist, chewy innards. Pure soul food.
Now, look. I should mention that not everything was perfection. The edifice of the shallot mash was a little stodgy; the bread (for my liking) was sliced too thin to enjoy it fully; the bread pudding would be too sweet for some people. But so exceptional are 1,000 things at Saddle River Inn that I’m inclined to believe my quibbles are born of a difference in taste; that if the kitchen and I were speaking the same language throughout the meal, some of the finer details simply got lost in translation along the way.
The thought reminds me of the time I ate at Alain Passard’s three-Michelin-starred Parisian spot L’Arpege years ago. Upon encountering a magnificently funky cheese, I asked the waiter, “What’s this weird one?” The waiter misinterpreted my intent and, although he had previously and dutifully only spoken in French to that point, said in perfect, blunt English, “No. You are wrong. The cheese is perfect.”
The point is, it’s the peculiarities and imperfections that make food more perfect. It’s wabi-sabi, it’s human, it’s real. Noticing that the beef in the noodle dish wasn’t as unctuous as I’d hoped it would be is only possible because the tuna carpaccio I ate the course before sharpened the pathways between palate and noggin so acutely that I could taste everything all at once.
The final verdict
Yes, Saddle River Inn is essential. If it closed tomorrow, North Jersey dining would be worse for it. Thank you for recommending it.
I’ll pay it forward by saying that if you’re an average Joe or Jane like me, you might be wary of the prices on the menu. Don’t be. Given that it’s BYOB, it won’t be much more than a night out at a decent place elsewhere and even though you may drop a few hundred bucks, it’s still a value. The word “bargain” is beneath a place like this, but so rich is the experience here that that’s what it feels like.
Go: Saddle River Inn. 2 Barnstable Court, Saddle River; 201-825-4016, saddleriverinn.com.
Matt Cortina is a food reporter for NorthJersey.com/The Record. If you have recommendations for other essential North Jersey restaurants for him to visit, go here or email me at mcortina@gannett.com.